trust issues

There's a good-slash-depressing-slash-scary feature on match-fixing in the Guardian today. The basic premise is that the amounts of money in sport make it very attractive to organised criminals. It says that lack of trust in results is endemic in certain parts of the world. It points out that lack of trust in results and general conspiracoid (constrasoid?) thinking would be nearly as corrosive - or as corrosive but in a slightly different way - as actual match-fixing, since sport is appealing because we think it is pure.

Because it is embarrassing I know so little about various things, I read the (it seemed to me excellent) Very Short Introduction to Economics last year, which went on and on about how trust was a fundamental precondition for the kinds of economic activity that promote growth.

Partly I am always interested in the way sport is similar to or illustrative of the wider, messier world. Partly, on a more meta level, I am interested in how and why we focus on different explanatory paradigms at different times, and at the moment we seem to be particularly concerned with trust. This doesn't mean I don't think trust is and always has been important, but there are reasons for it being the important thing we are interested in right now. Maybe it is the important thing which is currently vulnerable, after not having been for a while? I obviously do not know, but I am interested.